Hello, everyone. And welcome to our new course, Sustainable
Agricultural Land Management. This course is going to be about
sustainable production practices for agricultural food production.
How farmers produce food economically, and, and make money.
And also do it in a way that, protects the environment.
I'm George Hocmuth. I'm a faculty member in the Soil and Water
Sciences Department here at the University of Florida, and we're coming to you from
the campus of the University of Florida in Gainesville.
As I travel around this state and around this country I notice a bumper sticker on
the trucks of farmers. It says that farmers feed the world.
This is so very true, but did you also know that experts say that farmers will
have to increase food production over the next two or three decades.
This is to meet the increasing demand from increasing population on this globe.
As you look over my shoulder you'll notice the students on the campus changing
classes. This is, they're part of the younger
generation around the world that will be faced with important decisions about food
production. About issues and policies, and also about
practices that farmers will use to produce food in a sustainable way.
I grew up on a commercial vegetable farm in this country and I've watched my family
grow vegetables trying to make the, the farm profitable dealing with weather
vagaries and market problems. But I've also watched them adopt new
production practices, that allow them to be more efficient in vegetable production
and also production practices like soil conservation that we'll learn about in
this course to protect the river that ran through our ran through our farm.
Agriculture has changed tremendously over the last several decades.
And if we look at it on a day to day or a week to week basis we may not see a great
change. But I can tell you that over a career
there has been tremendous changes in agriculture.
In the way they produce more efficiently and also in the production practices that
they've adopted to protect the environment.
Through this career I've spent a lot of time working with our farmers particularly
here in Florida, but in other states to help develop what we call now best
management practices, that help farmers adopt production practices, particularly
with fertilizer and water management, that help them become more efficient and
protect the environment. Much of this information has been involved
in, in put into extension education programs to help teach farmers these best
management practices. I've used the information that my
colleagues have developed at the University of Florida through their
research and also colleagues all over this country and around the world in the
courses that I teach. So, I bring this information that's
science based into our courses to focus on agricultural production systems, and how
we can make them more profitable, but also more protective of the environment.
Your course is one such course where we have taken the information from this
state, this country, and also even around the world, and brought it together.
And hopefully, you'll benefit from this course.
I'm hoping that everyone will at least have some small benefit and take home
information from this course that will benefit you if you're a farmer or whether
you're someone who helps farmers. In our course we're going to start out
with some big picture topics. For example, we'll look at some water
quality issues around this country and also around the world.
And we'll look at some aspects farming systems.
Where farmers are trying to address farming practices to make their practices
more environmentally friendly. We'll talk a little bit about regulations
that we use in this country to address water quality issues.
And we'll look a little bit specifically about how agriculture fits in to this
whole regulation arena. We'll go from there to looking more
specifically about some aspects pertaining to production systems.
We'll talk a little bit about soils and how they impact our farming practices and
also environmental protection. We'll talk about nutrient management on
farms. We'll talk about fates and flows, inputs
and outputs of nutrients on our farms. If you haven't already been introduced,
I'll introduce you to the concept of a nutrient budget, or a nutrient mass
balance on farms. And we'll talk about how we can actually
take a look at the quantity of nutrients that are coming and going in a farming
system. And pinpoint parts in that fate and flow
where we can apply best management practices.
We'll take a look as specific fertilization management.
We'll also take a look at specific water management and irrigation practices.
And we'll try to bring all of this together at the end to talk about where
we've come from and, and how we're progressing towards sustainability for
agriculture. I also want to introduce you if you
haven't already to the term triple bottom line, this will be a theme in this course.
Triple bottom line simply means that when we make decisions or we try to determine
best management practices, for example for farmers, that we make a broad
determination and consideration of all of the impacting factors.
So, we'd be taking a look at, for example, the three main parts of the triple bottom
line. What society determines or desires for
agriculture production systems? How the farmers need to produce crops and
be economical, to make a profit, and also the practices that we use on farms to make
sure that the, the food is produced in an environmentally friendly way.
So social, environment, and economic are the basis for the triple bottom line and
you'll see that will become a theme through this course.
We will refer to it quite often. I want to let everyone know as we get
started that this course is not about any one particular production system.
So for example, we'll talk about conventional agriculture and we'll talk
about, about organic systems in this course.
It's also not about small farms and large farms, for example, I believe that most of
the information that we'll talk about in this course and discuss would apply to
whether you're a small farm with 20 acres or a large farm managing 20,000 acres.
Also we are going to talk mostly about experiences from this country, looking at
US agriculture, but I'm also, I've also attempted to bring in experiences and
examples from other countries and from around the world.
We're also going to focus on food production, crop systems, systems, in this
course. There are a lot of other production
systems, animal production systems, livestock, for example that we will not be
able to include in the short time that I have with you.
I also want to let you know that there are going to be many of you out there taking
this course who will have a lot of experience in agricultural production, and
maybe in the issues that we'll talk about. I hope through our discussion topics,
those of you who have experience Will lend your experience and knowledge for the
benefit of the course and for the students.
We all can learn from each other through this course.
Also, I'll let you know that some of the topics that we talk about, particularly
when we talk about sustainability issues. There are and tend to be differences of
opinion on these. And so I look forward to a hardy
discussion of some of these issues as you all partake in the discussions on our,
through our discussion board with the course.
That will be a good way to bring new experiences, differing opinions, and
knowledge to the table for the benefit of everybody in the course, and I look
forward to that part of the course. So how is the course set up?
Well, our course involves eight weeks. It's eight weeks in length.
We'll have lectures three times during each week where we'll present the topic
for the day. Also we'll have plenty of time for
discussions. I'm going to post a discussion topic for
everyone that will deal with each of the weeks.
Those discussion topics will hopefully provide an opportunity for everyone to
discuss an issue. That in some way relates to, to the topic
of the week, but also gives people an opportunity to discuss and raise issues of
interest. And as I said there's a high level of
variation in the, in the students and we have folks that I'm sure are very
experienced and I hope they'll bring that experience and knowledge to the table
through these discussion periods. You'll also have a chance to take a quiz
on the material to practice answering questions about the information that was
presented during the week. We've also developed a course project for
those of you that want to. Delve a little bit deeper into the topic.
You might, you might want to pick a topic that's important to you locally on your
farm or in your region, and start to describe a little bit about the problem,
and some ideas that you might have for improving and making agriculture more
sustainable. Everything about the course will be
managed through the, the course website. So I hope you have a chance to go through
and look and, and you'll find all of the information that you need to navigate
through the eight weeks. I look forward to bringing this course to
you, and I look forward to seeing all of the discussion about the information that
we'll, we'll present during the course. So let's get started.
